hot pursuit

I'm sitting in bed at two in the afternoon sans pants with a cat at my feet and a room decor that writes the book on tornado chic.  Exhibit A:

Because I always say that your room should reflect your emotional state and dang it if I'm going to be a hypocrite.  Let's just say I've quit wearing eye makeup because there's a chance all the pre-work crying caused my coworkers to think I was becoming a meth addict.  I wish I could say my low point was when Ava found me sobbing into a bowl of cereal the night before my birthday.  Not because I was getting older but because it felt wrong to celebrate with a heart as angsty as mine has been.  But as they are prone to do, my people showed up in ALL the ways and refused to let me get lost in my hot-messness.  There was a lot of love in a 24 hour time period.

This day and most days, I'm being carried along and truth be told~
IIIIII'mmm kind of an awkward load right now.
I've got white knuckles on the evidence that my anchor is in the wild imagination of Him who loves me and makes me see that I am known even in the midst of my pain and loneliness.  And anchors become very real after months of pain, multiple colonics day spas (as my friend Anne lovingly calls them), followed by warm metal milkshakes and hours of tests that repeatedly show up negative.
But if I have any say in the matter, 38 will not be a blur of pain and quiet exhaustion followed by stress that is nicely packaged and shoved aside.  So listen up 38!  Here's your mantra:

*Communicate with the team
*Love the wiggly bits
*Say yes to help
*Choose the right words AND have the courage to say them
*Try something new (I'm talking to you hot yoga and whatever that one is called where you dance around like a crazed African princess)
*Sacrifice self pity on the altar of Every Better Thing
*Two naps on the weekends
*Grace to all the messy roommates
*We are not one 7am- mama -wakeup away from disaster
*Speak gentle truth to the voices of doubt and shame and guilt and regret, "Shut the h*&% up!  Rebekah's my friend and you can't talk to her like that."
*Say yes to bathroom dance parties
*Enjoy the quiet
*Enjoy the noise
*Laugh at the jokes
*Protect the margins (This one gets its own post-it-note on the dashboard)
*We don't need money, we can live off our love. By that I mean we'll need to sell our 2014 sex tape to remodel our kitchen.
*Carry each moment as it comes
*Keep your eyes wide open for His presence
*Love wins
*Just a spoonful of....ok I'm done.